


It's All A Falling Through

by IBoatedHere



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7965484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IBoatedHere/pseuds/IBoatedHere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both knew the risks when they signed up for this. </p>
<p>Everyone does. </p>
<p>You don’t willingly run into a burning building without knowing there’s a chance you might not come out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's All A Falling Through

They both knew the risks when they signed up for this. 

Everyone does. 

You don’t willingly run into a burning building without knowing there’s a chance you might not come out. 

Five years ago Caleb was sitting at the station bitching about how often he had to shave when Ben walked in for the first time. 

Young, fresh faced and All American in a white t-shirt and jeans with Washington’s hand on his shoulder as he introduced them. 

Caleb immediately shut up and tripped over his own feet on his way to shake Ben’s hand, something the rest of the guys still give him shit about.

(“There are only two things on this Earth that shut Caleb Brewster up. Six alarm fires and the way Ben Tallmadge looks in white t-shirts.” It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t determined to say it every time Ben stepped in a room. But it also wouldn’t be so bad if Ben didn’t seem to live in white t-shirts.)

Ben fit right in. 

Responsible, brave, competent. 

Fit right against Caleb side as they stepped into a house fire, making sure all the rooms were clear and them making sure Caleb got out before him. 

Fit right against him at a bar where they’d all go to decompress after a long fight with a fire that just would not quit. 

Pressed together hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder at the funeral of the first person Ben just could not save.

“It’s not your fault,” Caleb tells him for what feels like the thousandth time. He knows Ben’s eyes are red and watery behind his sunglasses and Caleb just aches with the need to take them off, push Ben’s hair back then push his face into Ben’s chest, nose along his collar bone then kiss him until the hurt stops. 

But Ben takes a deep breath, nods and pats Caleb on the back before he walks back to his car. 

Caleb spends most of his time just trying to figure Ben out.

How he can be stupidly reckless one minute and the softest thing Caleb’s ever seen the next.

Ben can clear a building and get everyone out the door to safety and then hear something floor above him. Something that doesn’t sound right. It’s not a wall caving in or the roof starting to let go. He can just tell. He pushes everyone back then runs up the stairs, through flames, ignoring everyone else yelling at him to get out of the damn house because the thing is going to go only to return three minutes later (the longest three minutes of Caleb’s life) holding a soot stained dog that’s having trouble breathing. 

Someone takes a photo of him kneeling on the grass with his respirator over the dog’s nose as the fire rages on in the background. 

It makes the front page of the local paper. 

People call him a hero. 

Everyone at the station buys him stuffed animals and throw them at him whenever he walks in the main room.

He doesn’t have to pay for his own breakfast at the diner in town for months. 

Washington is pissed and rightfully so. There’s good press and then there’s this. There’s shouting come from his office and when Ben emerges it’s obvious he has to physically stop himself from slamming the door but does nothing to soften the hard set of his jaw or his clenched fists.

Caleb thinks, _good, you deserve it,_ and doesn’t talk to him for a week. He tries to go for longer but he can’t hold out. He wouldn’t be able to get his own emotions in check in that short a time and the need to be close to Ben ultimately wins out. 

It’s not the last time it happens. Whatever Washington said to him didn’t stick because Caleb has found Ben sitting in the back of an ambulance coughing up a lung or being treated for burns more times than he can count.

Caleb lets him have it right there and after the third or fourth time the paramedics stop trying to hold him back and calm him down.

“What the fuck are you thinking? You can’t keep doing this, are you trying to get yourself killed? You put everyone in danger.”

“I put myself in danger. I’d never do anything to hurt you. Any of you.”

Ben is an idiot. Caleb knows this. He’s an idiot if he thinks that watching him run into a house they’ve been told to clear doesn’t kill him every time. Just the thought of something happening to him sends Caleb into a panic. That sometimes it wakes him up. He dreams of Ben disappearing down a hallway and being just out of reach with the ceiling collapses in and traps him. That the only way he can ever fall back asleep is if he sits up and looks to the cot beside him where he can see Ben sleeping peacefully, on his side or on his back. Face hidden in the pillow or tipped towards him. He has to watch the steady rise and fall of his chest before he’s able to lie back down. 

All the fight drains out of him in Caleb’s next words. “If something happened to you….”

Ben doesn’t finish the sentence for him. Doesn’t tell him that nothing ever will or that’ll he’ll always get out.

He just pulls him into a one armed hug and lets Caleb cling.

Ben smells intensely of smoke and sweat and Caleb is so in love.

He can be that. He roll his eyes and turn his back on authority to confront danger head on. 

But he’s also the boy that blushes and stutters over his words whenever someone pays him a compliment.

“Look at Tallmadge raking in the numbers,” Abe yells across the bar when he spots the napkins sitting in front of Ben. Some of them are neatly written in pen while others are hastily put together with bright red lipstick.

“It’s not…I don’t….I’m not going to…it’s not a big deal,” he finally gets out as he neatly stacks them one on top of the other. 

Caleb watches him carefully fold them up and put them in his coat pocket before he corrals everyone into waiting taxi’s.

He and Caleb take the last one together and as it’s pulling up Ben takes the napkins out and tosses them into a trash can before rushing forward and getting the door before Caleb can touch it.

Usually Ben and Anna go to talk at schools but he hears from her what it’s like.

They explain to kids how important it is to have smoke detectors and what to do if they go off. How they should have a meeting place set up outside where they’ll go and wait for their family and how to only call 911 if it’s an emergency. They hand out little plastic helmets to all the kids and they always come back to the station so happy. 

“You should have seen the way these teachers were swooning over him,” Anna tells Caleb just within earshot of Ben. He’s doing his best to ignore it but there’s nothing he can do to hide the flush that’s spreading down his neck and beneath the collar of his shirt or the way he has to bite his lip to stop the shy smile from spreading any further. “I thought it was going to be a real emergency when he picked those kids up to give them their turn in the truck.” She bats at Caleb’s arm. “He even put his helmet on one of them. I thought I was gonna melt.” 

Ben clears his throat and closes his locker and walks away.

“He’s real cute, Caleb,” she says with crossed arms and eyebrows raised. “You should do something about that.”

And Caleb would, in a heartbeat, if he wasn’t so overwhelmed with the fear of being rejected. 

Ben tosses numbers. He never picks anyone up or even talks about an old flame. 

Maybe he’s private and dead set against dragging anything from his personal life into a his professional life and vice-versa. 

Maybe they’re not good enough and he’s holding out for something better, something more. Someone that’ll finally give him a reason to be more careful. Someone he’ll want to come home to. 

It almost slips out a dozen different ways.

“Do you want to get dinner? Just the two of us.”

“Let me buy you coffee.”

“Let me be the reason you’re more careful. Come back to me. Come back for me.”

He imagines saying “I love you,” flat out and sinking his hands into his hair and kissing him against the side of the truck.

They all live there sitting right at the tip of his tongue waiting for the right moment. 

The calls comes in just after midnight. 

There’s an apartment complex two towns over that’s up in flames and they’re calling on all the surrounding stations to help out. 

Ben looks a little bleary eyed as they pull on their gear and Caleb cups a hand to the side of his face. It’s meant to be teasing. He means to say look alive but Ben tucks his chin into Caleb’s palm and sighs. 

“Let’s go everyone. Get a move on,” Anna yells from the truck and Ben straightens up. Caleb’s hand falls away. 

The building looks almost fully engulfed by the time they get there. This close to being a lost cause.

“Is everyone out,” Ben asks the second he’s out of the truck. 

The captain shakes his head. “Still coming down.”

And that’s all Ben needs to know because he’s off and into the building with everyone else following him.

It’s not as bad inside. Smokey but people are making it down the stairs as they go up. He tells Abe and Rob to help the first elderly couple down and Anna to take the family of four, one with a baby wrapped in a blanket a few floors up. 

Then it’s just the two of them and it stays that way for awhile. They go up four more floors before Caleb tugs on his arm. 

“We should go back.”

“I thought I heard something.”

“You didn’t. There’s nothing up here.”

“How can you be sure?” 

Caleb looks ahead and behind them. Flames are starting to creep in on all sides. They don’t have much longer. 

“You go back,” Ben tells him and Caleb’s already shaking his head when he adds “I just want to check one more apartment.”

“No, I’m not leaving you here. We both go or we both stay.”

Ben looks at him and then past him and Caleb sees him access the state of the hallway. 

“Yeah, okay, let’s go. Both of us.”

Caleb goes first and goes slow. He can feel the floor bend beneath him with every step he takes. They’re ten feet from the stairwell when the floor gives way in front of him and Ben has to pull him back. 

There’s a huge gap missing between the two sides and the hallway behind them is almost completely engulfed. Forward is the only way but the gap is so large, Caleb’s not sure he has the legs for it.

“You have to jump,” Ben tells him with a hand at his back.

“You first.”

“No, you go.”

“Caleb, go.”

They don’t have time to argue. Their window of opportunity is rapidly closing so Ben grabs his arms.

“Go, you have to go.”

“I won’t make it,” Caleb tells him. “It’s too far. You can do it, you’re running out of time. Go.”

“You will make it. You can do this. Just do it, just jump.”

“Ben, I can’t. You have to go.”

“I love you,” he says suddenly. “You have to know that. All this time, every second I’ve known you I’ve been in love with you. Everything I’ve done was to keep you safe. I wouldn’t be telling you to do this if I didn’t think you could. You’ll be fine. Jump.”

“I…”

“Go.” He forcefully turns him around. “You’ll be okay, I’m right behind you, I promise, I’m right behind you.”

Caleb jumps and his feet hit the ground just inches from the edge. Ben should be able to make that no problem.

He turns around to call him over, to tell him he loves him too and sees the ground fall from beneath Ben’s feet. 

*****

Caleb still dreams about him. 

About Ben moving off down a hallway and Caleb reaching for him. 

Except now he grabs him.

They’re not wearing gloves and Ben’s hands fit right into his own. 

Ben has a callous at the base of his index finger that catches on the stubble on Caleb’s face when he slides his hand along his jaw to pull him in for a kiss.

The air is fresh and clean and Caleb tells him he loves him then counts Ben’s eyelashes when they fan thickly against the top of his cheek when he looks down. Still shy after all this time. 

Caleb always wakes up before he finishes counting. 

He sits up and looks across the room.

The cot beside him is always empty.


End file.
